Disclaimer

Black Dragon is MY Viewer, i decide which feature i want to add and which to remove, i share this Viewer to show the world that user base size is not important, i do rate quality by effort, thought and love put into the project, not some rough estimated numbers. I consider feature requests only if i you can name proper valid reasons i can agree on. It is my (unpaid) time i'm putting into this project, i'm not here to cater to every Joe's desires.

Monday, July 30, 2012

User Interface:

The new preferences panel now has subpanels collapsing and extending when needed, not all of them work yet but the most important ones do. Im making progress here =D. Previously mentioned options still dont work however. Preferences will also just be drawn/rendered and updated now when its really visible for the user , this should counter any FPS loss that might be caused by displaying the preferences panel.

Preferences panel will now also blur the background when opened , this is done by setting Depth of Field to 0 causing it to extreme blur , in order to counter the FPS loss for this action your effective rendering resolution will be reduced to its half until preferences is closed , which will revert both back to their initial values. Later on this will be deactivatable.

One achievement (stay 100h online in total) had a gold medal icon instead of its correct platin one.

The FPS counter will be displayed as text by default now instead of as bar.

Fixes:

Glow strength and Camera Field of View were always reverting to my precoded defaults after a teleport, this should be no more from now on! means you can finally haz custom glow strength and camera fov.

Fixed some color palette entries which the viewer was complaining about. Absolutely trivial.

Disable left-click sit/touch were wrong labeled with "Enable left-click sit/touch" this is now fixed and it shouldnt confuse anymore!

Windlight:

I added a modified Linden default water preset with my water texture for Tone Mapping. Its called "Default Tone Mapping", try it out!

Coming updates:

Next week i will focus on merging Pathfinding and most likely also the new HTTP.

Another week later i will focus on finishing the preferences panel and moving everything from preferences floater to preferences panel.

I might also take a look into the build floater soon , im thinking of changing it into a Blender/Cinema/3D Studio like side-toolbar.

Snapshots:

Changelog:

added "Default Tone Mapping" water presetadded DoF blur to background while preferences panel is openadded basic behavior to preferences paneladded subpanel buttons to preferences paneladded most sub panels to preferences panelfixed some missing color palette entriesfixed camera angle and glow strength reverting to defaults after teleportfixed disable left click sit/touch beeing wrong labeled as enablefixed 100h achievement having a gold medal instead of a platin onechanged tone mapping defaults slightly to be more bright in overallchanged preferences panel to only draw it when its really visiblechanged FPS counter to text by default

1.46(.1)

fixed Outbox and Machinima sidebar toolbar icons not foundfixed login layout selectionfixed Viewer not initializing when no settings were presentfixed the Viewer crying about a Debug called WatchdogDisabled which doesnt existfixed the Viewer using Second Life´s default Cache locationremoved some internal features that served no purpose atm

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

NOTE #3: IM ALSO SORRY ABOUT THE DELAYED RELEASE. HAD TO FIGHT THOSE THINGS CALLED EMOTIONS!

NOTE #4: INITIAL FREEZES ON LOGIN STILL HAPPEN BUT ALOT LESS , PROGRESS!

UPDATE #2:Fixed 64bit and 32bit versions are up, this fixed release also comes with some small additional fixes, read them below, thank you for your patience.

1.46(.1)fixed Outbox and Machinima sidebar toolbar icons not foundfixed login layout selectionfixed Viewer not initializing when no settings were presentfixed the Viewer crying about a Debug called WatchdogDisabled which doesnt existfixed the Viewer using Second Life´s default Cache locationremoved some internal features that served no purpose atm

UPDATE:

The Settings issue has been fixed. I will now start compiling 2 new versions that contain this fix. You will laugh when you hear what was causing it. A fix that fixed a crash when setting overall graphics to low. Will update when the new Downloads are available.

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|=======<WARNING DANGER AHEAD>======= |

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*LOUD SIREN*

Remember kids , when playing with Nirans Viewer you should always keep above in mind!

It may not save your life.

Ok. Lets get to the Release cuz...

Purple rapist sergal wants to share something with you!

Its an exciting one because UI changed. Drastically. Everywhere. Just preferences...

User Interface:

Gentlementlementlementlemen, may i show you Preferences 2.0?

Im making a new , obviously Skyrim inspired preferences panel , that again hopefully makes stuff a bit easier. Without logical categorisation like before. As for now it can be shown via F2 key and will later hopefully fully replace CTRL + P preferences floater , no more prefs floater floating around , just a plain , fullscreen preferences panel, that hopefully looks and feels smoother than the static preferences window.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to tell me ideas for this new preferences panel , also report any feature that is NOT working. Basically those should be all color selectors, camera preset editors , nearly all tone mapping settings and some others and YOU are here to find those "others".

NOTE: The background blur effect was done manually via DoF and will later happen automatically if DoF is enabled and if this feature itself is enabled.

I also fixed the graphics panel internally which was necessary for the new preferences panel , in order to prevent the quality dropdowns from flying around.

I removed the Darkness Default skin from the skin selection , because it wasnt available anymore anyway but could lead to problems when selecting it. I also added the long missing Ashen blood preview image to the skin selection :) aaaand i enabled Azure skin again , which should now work mostly correct. If not please tell me.

Rendering:

A few fixes here and there , some tidy up in the rendering pipeline and now fully fixed Alpha´s and Flexis HURRAY!

I´ve redone the Tone Mapping defaults to look even more like the old one , the old remake was crap, this one is better and for an even better better old style look try the "Tone Mapping" Windlight Preset i made. In all other circumstances it should look pretty ok and normal.

Sunshine:

Project Sunshine has been merged into my Viewer up to what is most recent and open for everyone to see at the moment of merging. I am not sure if it works as it should , i havnt taken a look into the Project page yet which probably list some SIMs that support server side baking. If you want to try it , you can enable server side baking via Debug Settings -> UseServerTextureBaking. You will need someone else in order to check if it works correctly.

Linux:

Well , sadly Miguael left me again , this time forever as it seems. He couldnt stand my absolutely annoying , bad and ignorant habits and characteristics :/. In that case i wish him good luck for whatever he is doing now , probably continueing his own Viewer ArtVi based on my Viewer. This probably means that Linux might be left behind for this Release aswell, however i will post an update if anything changes.

Mac:

I have to clear some things up here , due to more and more Mac users becoming interessted in my Viewer.

I dont have a Mac compiler , nor a Mac PC , nor someone with a Mac that could do it. Theres this really crummy thingy about crosscompiling i WONT do. It makes trouble. Alot. I wouldnt even be able to test it.

Sorry :/

Performance:

Some users might experience extreme and constant FPS drop. This is sadly usual. Thing is, my (may it be called totally fucked up) old version was so "fucked up" and missing so many patches and fixes that it became incompatible with what is most important for this Viewer. Shining. Shining is the repository/workflow often seen as the rendering interessted side of development. Those issues are tagged as SH-XXXX , they add , fix or remove rendering related stuff, you may remember that this Viewer is all about rendering. And some secondary things. However , merging shining to find out that it doesnt work anymore pretty much destroys the whole purpose of this Viewer , so i had to give up the old "fucked up" code that somehow ran very fast and stable for a lot of people , to continue further on. I´ve replaced this code mostly with Linden Development , that means all bad habits and behaviors the Linden Viewers have , will most likely find its way into my Viewer + ALOT more. Im working on fixing them , or finding someone to do it. It will take lots of time and fuckups to get this Viewer back to what fucked up state it had when i left it behind , please keep that in mind.

Snapshots:

NOTE: All those pics have been shot at a Resolution of 6000x3306 and higher!

Changelog:

1.46

MAINT-1262 Fix for crash when setting graphics to LowMAINT-1161: non standard sea level not correctly rendered around private islands.MAINT-1147 Don't rebuild volume meshes on region crossing.MAINT-840 VWR-28604 DEV-2548: [PUBLIC]Object by multiple creators shows creator as "(unknown)" in Inventory.MAINT-775 Fix for particle index pool corruption on teleport.MAINT-646 Factor std::vector out of lloctreeMAINT-442: [PUBLIC]Unable to change parcel restrictions for a scripts-disabled parcel in a damage-enabled region.tweaked all Spellcheck floaterstweaked UI Preview floatertweaked default Tone Mapping preset to be even more old style likefixed lots of warnings , also added new ones ;)fixed some internal labelings in a few of my filesfixed Ashenblood having no preview texture in skin selectionadded a completely new stylish preferences panel (WIP)removed darkness default skin from skin selectionupdated DejaVu Fonts to 2.33changed bzip2 to xz compressionenabled Water Reflections to be changed on the fly without having to reload shadersmoved Only Friends and Groups can call or IM me to Privacy panelmoved Azure into seperate skin , Darkness into default and fixed lots of problems with thatmerged Project Sunshine (disabled by default)

Monday, July 16, 2012

IMPORTANT: Clear Cache and Settings. Like usual. Thanks.WARNING: DO NOT USE "DISABLE OPENGL COMPATIBILITY PROFILES"WARNING #2: DO NOT UNTICK GL MAP ARB BUFFER!WARNING #3: DO NOT ENABLE VERTEX ARRAY OBJECTS!

a not so busy week is over again.
so what do we get this time?

First of all , i´ve seen that alot of people had problems with the previous 2 versions , activating Deferred due to my FXAA Shader tweaks. I HOPE i fixed it , im not sure because i dont have a PC that has problems compiling that shader , so i cant test , i can just guess that i fixed it because logs threw an error that seemed to be linked to a special flag i set to 1 in order to make FXAA look better. If it still shouldnt work look at the previous post on how to make it work.

User Interface:

Avatarlistitems in People floater were causing extreme rezzing lag due to my new layout style , so i had to tweak and redo them again , this doesnt fix the rezzing lag but it will reduce it alot.

I´ve upgraded my XML UI to be able to control X Y Z and Alpha Values easily via XML which i ALWAYS wanted from LL to do it , but i had to do it myself because it seems like its not very interessting for them. It would be interessting for Modders only anyway , mostly for me and Hitomi as example. Im sure she would be happy to get that feature :)

I made a small layout change to Objects Inspectors due to the price label that were off a bit :)

Spellcheck also works now! if you know how to set it up.

Rendering:

I´ve spend the whole week fixing Spotlights and Local Lights , however at the end i came to the conclusion that i had to merge further up with Exodus to fix the DoF bugs which were still there causing a grid-like effect with DoF. That means , you can now select different Color Grading Styles and different Tone Mapping styles , Vignette also works now and has been added to the Tone Mapping graphics panel.

As you can see here i´ve been working on recreating the old Tone Mapping style , the right one is the latest one but it still needs lots of tweaks and love. It will probably take 2-3 releases to get to a good default preset , you can also edit it to your likings if you wish to.

Issues:

This release will have lots of issues , most of which i am aware of and most of them im not sure if they are really Viewer bugs or just LL Servers going on strike again. Textures and Meshes not loading or slowly loading , Voice not working , Friendlist stays on (loading) , initial login freezes.... all that kind of stuff. However i hope you can enjoy this release anyway with all its bugs.

Next Release:

Next Release i will probably finally start merging the new HTTP Get and Server Side Baking aka Project Sunshine , this will probably fix texture loading and further avatar baking issues if those are really related to the Viewer itself.

Special Thanks to Sovereign Engineer (Drake Arconis) from Singularity who has temporarly joined me this week and fixed ALOT of stuff , cleaned up my code, fixed Linux, squeezed lots of FPS and did some additions to my Viewer aswell like FModEX support. If theres anything i can do for you or Singularity just tell me.

Changelog:

1.45

MAINT-1228 FIX Can not put more than one object into the contents of an objectadded ability to control X Y Z and Alpha Values via XMLadded new Tone Mapping from Exodusadded Tone Mapping and Color Grading mode optionsadded Vignette options now that it works againadded FModEX Audio Support (thanks to Drake for doing this)added Drake to Special thanks pageremoved unused QAModeEventHostPort Debug Settingfixed Spotlights and Local Lightsfixed (hopefully) FXAA preventing people from using Deferredfixed lots of Log errors (also thanks to Drake for helping me with a lot of them)fixed lots of Linux issues (thanks to Drake for doing this)fixed Object inspectors layoutupdated some Windlight Presetsupdated RLVa and fixed some stuff (thanks to Drake for doing this)tweaked avatarlistitems to produce way less rezzing lagtweaked group and recent lists a bit to prevent selection rectangle beeing cut offtweaked lots on performancetweaked default Tone Mapping settings to recreate an old style Tone Mapping (WIP)tweaked LAA to be default from now on (thanks to Drake for doing this)

Thursday, July 12, 2012

UPDATE: Sorry i accidentally took the newest one instead of an old one...try it again if it didnt work..

Listen , i found the problem why some of you cannot use Deferred Rendering.
Your Video Card´s OpenGL Version is too old.
well thats only 50% of it...
aaaand.. FXAA.
now we will form a sentence -> Your Video Card´s OpenGL version is too old for FXAA to work properly with my tweaks since 1.43. daaaaaam...

Now the FIX:
You have 2 Options , please select:
I wanna go home to mommy and whine like a pussy , waiting for Niran to fix it in next Release next monday.

OR

I will stay MANLY like a REAL MAN or WOMEN and do it on my own. screw Niran and his shity weekly releases can wait, i will just right click THIS:Previous FXAA Shader prior to 1.43
Download it like a MAN or WOMEN. Put it into:Nirans Viewer/app_settings/shaders/class1
and overwrite the f*** out of the old Version , again like a MAN orWOMEN (clicking yes yes yes yes ok yes yes like a bored guy) and then starting the s*** out of this Viewer while having a Troll face at Graphics saying "Problem?".
After that i will be a very brave User and report back if it worked, and rip Nirans head off if it didnt work.

Enjoy SpecialFX (Special Effects) again!
i hope you had a laugh with me :)

Monday, July 9, 2012

WARNING: Please clear your Settings , Viewer folder and Cache manually before using this version!NOTE: Sometimes not correctly shown alpha channels are normal and havnt been fixed yet! just right click them!

NOTE #2: As mentioned in my group , too new drivers (most recent and beta) may cause problems , weird graphic glitches and not working features! same can go for too old aswell! - im having 296.10 (64bit) ones right now and they work perfectly for ATI users , those drivers were from ~15th April , use drivers from around that date if you dont know which to take.

NOTE #3: Slower or not rezzing textures may occour when using Tone Mapping for some reason , im also aware of that but cannot change that atm, just stay patient or try right click refresh texturesNOTE #4: Black Mess = disable OpenGL Compatibility Profiles in Performance tab!

Finally!

i reached a point where i think i can say that i can release this monstrous thing...

User Interface:

You wont find much new here , there are however some slight changes , IM headers sliding faster , new Tone Mapping options and a whole new panel for it to adjust everything. Object owner list in Land Info has been fixed , the topbar has been tweaked a bit for lower UI sizes and some things have been cleaned up internally.

Spellchecker:

Just a quick Info. According to Maddy in his Blog "Echt Virtuell" , this feature is working as intended , i havnt found out how yet , im probably just too stupid but i will ask him and translate a Tutorial for you.

Rendering:

Rendering has been completely ripped out , destroyed , hammered , burned down and thrown overboard. I replaced it with what powers the Linden Viewer and thats where the big problems already start , a lot of you will probably not be able to turn on shadows or deferred and im not sure whats causing this , maybe your video card not supporting OpenGL 4.0 , maybe your video card not beeing listed in the GPU table , too new video card drivers , too old ones and so on. I will try disabling the feature code so all features will be available to all video cards no matter how good they are , at this point there will be no safety anymore , even the slowest and crapiest PC´s can turn on extreme graphic effects and might suffer extreme corruption , graphic bugs and in worst case up to a driver or OS crash or freeze. please keep this in mind.

With all those massive changes and redoing of the rendering pipeline also come 2 good things. Performance. Tone Mapping.

Performance has been greatly increased and i´ve talked a bit with a Singularity Dev how to squeeze out even more FPS , the result for me was getting 45 FPS where i only got 30 before.

Projectors , Local Lights and Occlusion Querries are rendered a lot faster , SSAO and Shadow rendering went to moon aswell (due to using the way lower resolution shadows and SSAO of Linden labs)

We also initially lost the nice glowy water , which i definetly wanted to keep , otherwise water looked so....fad and boring , however i turned down that water glow massively.

Tone Mapping , which originally came from Exodus has been ported over and tweaked , its absolutely not perfect and far from beeing complete at this point but as all my changes did , will this one aswell need time to grow up... for now you should enjoy what we already got , here a few pics to show you how Tone Mapping can look like

Word of Warning:

Please please please do keep in mind that this Version will from now on form the Future of this Viewer , theres no turning back now. Im aware that it might be very buggy because of the extremly replaced code , its a bit like throwing my Viewer away and replacing it completely by Linden´s and then redoing everything except the UI XMLs itself from scratch , it really hurts and consumes time.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Well i havnt made it in time and 1.44 will still need some time to flesh out a lot of bugs
but you can help me by trying this Release Candidate and reporting all bugs to me that you find , especially UI bugs

note that you might have to delete your settings in order to make this release working , so make backups!
oh and you might wanna clear your cache just in case

Monday, July 2, 2012

Im sorry to tell you that i will have to delay this weeks release , im currently redoing pretty much the whole Viewer to bring it up to date with the most recent Linden Shining release and hopefully working!

It will most likely contain even more bugs than the previous release and if i dont find a fix until release alphas might bug a bit sometimes.

But i´ve heard some reports about certain features like the land objects panel not showing anything , or grabbing in mouselook beeing on by default , preventing you from shooting , i will hopefully get around to fix them before next release , until then you have to wait and see!